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design with nature in mind

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April 2010

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long live the christmas tree floating gardens

design for a living worldchula designs

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contents

8-10 floating gardens

18-20 design for a living world

13-15 long live the christmas tree

23-25 eco-pods

11 artist watch

21 trends

16 happenings

26 sound bits

28 around the world

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artist watchInspiration is never lacking for Dutch industrial designer Han

Koning whose studio and living space happens to be a refur-

bished cargo ship built in 1901. Docked on a canal in the cen-

tre of Groningen, the MS Magdalena was retired in the mid-

1970s and eventually ended up in the hands of Koning, who

has turned it into a 100m2 apartment with a fairly open layout

A roof was added to the cargo bay that once carried metal and

wood, following the boat’s curved lines. The bay does double

duty by harboring the black block that houses all the electrical

equipment, as well as the master bedroom. This leads to the liv-

ing area, open kitchen and lavatory.

The difference between designing for a boat rather than a build-

ing is in the curved lines. Nothing is straight, and everything

is handcrafted. At the same time there are many strange,

small, unpractical areas that I had to work with. I want-

ed the boat’s character to stay intact while adding new

elements. I made a creative mix by leaving original au-

thentic parts and adding straight minimal elements. I

bought the boat because it caught my attention. I like

old things and the dock where it is situated is in one of

the most beautiful and quiet parts of Groningen. Now

it’s all finished and I decided to stay. In the future it

may become the family pied-à-terre. The mood is mini-

malistic. It is a specific period in life that made me design

it like this. At the moment I like my products and interiors

to be minimalistic. The curved lines of the boat and the

flickering light that reflects off the water into the interior are

what I like to focus on.

Han Koning

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long live the

christmas treeby Fabien Cappello

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christmas tree

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9saw all the trees popping up in the street again, but this time the party was over.

I created a series of small occasional piece of furniture, that can, because of their scale, go eas-ily in the homes and broadcast the aesthetic and the vision of the project. I like to imagine, at a next stage, that temporary Christmas tree farm could use wasted space in the inner London. (e.g. a

space waiting for refurbishment.) The open farm would provide a little greenery

and Christmas trees for the local com-munity and an ‘extra-local’ wood.

Extract from a conversation between Santa Claus and Fa-

bien Cappello (January 2009).Fabien Cappello : [about the

project] I started this project back in mid-December 2007

when a Christmas tree stall popped out around the cor-

ner, where I was living in Lon-don. I saw the piles of trees arriv-

ing and I said to myself that it was quite a lot of wood. I think at this point, I actu-

ally noticed the fact that Christmas tree were also wood, I don’t think it came to my mind before… I waited for the beginning of January and I saw all the trees popping up in the street again, but this

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time the party was over. They were on the bin. [...] I decided to collect them, and that was not difficult to get thousand of them.[about recycling] My design is not about solving the problem of the collect of (nor it is about recycling)… maybe it does, but that is not the point. I am looking at how the things works. I am interested in how we live in the city for instance.

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And what tru- l y compose a city. Not re- a l l y at an urban scale b u t more in details. I like to focus on facts that I notice and anal- y s e ; for instance : there is at some point of t h e year around 2 millions of Christmas tree send into the city, this amount of trees represents a lot of wood. From those facts it creates a lot of possibilities. I like to investigate about details or facts that push the possibilities even further. For instance Christmas trees are one of the trees that have one of the faster growing, and most of the trees “consumed” over the Christmas periode are 2 or 3 years old (which is extremely young for wood). And of course this wood is also inter-esting because it is a part of a very precise sys-tem and economy organised around Christmas and I wanted to create my own world within it.[about the inspiration] During the design process I kept in mind the story of timber-rafting in North America back in the 19th Century. Timber-rafting is basically a log transportation method in which log are tied together into raft and drifted across

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There is no rationalism value leading my desire to design.

13 a lake or down a wide river. This practise used to be common before the advent of the railroad and the improvement in truck and road network. The raft men -which could number up to 500 used logs to build galleys and organise the space they shared aboard. With the small timber they had to transport, they built cabins, furniture and tools. Those boats could navigate up to 5 or 6 months from one point to an other in an complete au-tarky. So that the raft became an island, with a micro-society evolving temporarily apart from the rest of the world and the wood shipping econo-my. Once arrived the logs were untied from the raft and the timber undo from the cabins and the pieces of furniture. The raft men were going back to their starting point or continued their trip fur-ther down another river, with a new boat and a

new crew. I found in this story the most beautiful and strong aspect of locality. They created a real parallel society… but they were only transporting some piece of tree! They took advantage of and abuse (but in a very good way) the system they were living (and working) in. They turned what they had to achieve into a complete, and to my eyes, very beautiful way of life.[about how the project could expand] As a next step for the project I like to imag-ine that Christmas tree farm could tempo-rarily use wasted space in the city (a plot on a building site, a section of a estate waiting for refurbishment, or even a sec-tion in a park that need to be re-designed). The growing farm will provide a greenery for the community, but also some extra lo-cal wood. I really imagine the Christmas tree

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pictures provided by Dezeen.cominterview provided by Dezeen.com

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carpenter (I) working and selling the Christmas tree collection in a small shop, in the center of the

city where the tree grown up (or were picked up). I really like the way London kept a lot of small shops and local services, I wanted to create a new one. I wanted every step of this project to happen in the inner Lon-don : the raw material is picked up from the farm in the street, it goes straight to the small workshop where the pieces of fur-niture are made and sold… It is a project

at a local city scale. Everything is manufac-ture with a very light wood worker equip-

ment, the same machine a Londoner would find in his local joinery or carpenter workshop.

[about the non-efficiency ] …but the modernist val-ues and ideal have been developed in such a different

time than the one I am living in. Such ideas as the ratio-nalisation of needs or the strong belief in the growing capitalist

industry…This system doesn’t appear to me as an ultimate model to follow. And there is no rationalism value (related to industry) leading my desire of design. There is just desire. The desire of the amateur or of the passionate get-ting excited and being lead by the envy. It might sounds a bite naive, but it is like this French postman called “le facteur Cheval” spending all his free time on decorating his house with thousand of stone collected during his round. He does it, that is all. It is not solving any problems, neither it is answering any needs, but it makes his heart beats. I am interest in activity that does not answer to any economic logic. We call those kind of activity a Hobby.Creating objects out of christmas trees became somehow my hob-by. I am doing it very seriously and on the side of any official effi-cient production or any official economic society… I collect and use the left-over material from the party organised by the Christmas in-dustry and take them apart from the capitalist economic system.

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trends

1. Texture

2. Keeping it real

3. Layered flooring

4. Bolder design decisions

5. Old is new again

6. Wallpapered ceilings

7. Artisanal goods

8. The well-traveled look

9. Palette

10. Mix it up

10 interior design trends of 2010

by Anh Minh-Lee

Ask a group of interior designers to talk about the latest decorating

trends and, chances are, they’ll wince just a little. Here’s the problem:

Trends are often considered the pieces you buy one year and throw

out the next, when they’re no longer gracing the pages of your favorite

shelter magazine.

However, not every trend is fleeting. A few years ago, going green

was hailed as one of the hottest trends. Now it is becoming a standard

throughout the design industry.

So we asked around and pulled together a list of 10 trends for

2010 that have some staying power.

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floatinggardens

Do plants really need soil? No, … Earth is no more than a tool. Just water containing minerals and nutrients, along with common daylight and carbon dioxide are necessary for plants to make photosynthesis possible. “ “

by Anne Holtrop

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gardens

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Floating gardens / Spa Wellness Amsterdam If architecture is a landscape full of non-coherent but co-existing elements, a landscape where different uses, social relations, spatial organizations and political viewpoints can co-exist simultaneously. If this situation is being emphasized, rather than straighten out, new

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possibilities can emerge that would otherwise never be found.The floating gardens design relates with that intention: building on water, architecture and landscape, private & public use and many more aspects.A surface is – apart from the waterside – probably the most neutral environment for

architecture. It is difficult to imagine the architecture of the country to continue on the water. But what architectural form can be found for a building on the water? The approach for floating gardens is to create a construction of a landscape. Like a stone of Alberto Giacometti is a construction of a stone.The architecture makes the walls and ceilings the outer for hills and valleys. Inside the interior follows the counter form of the landscape. Amorphous areas with faceted ceilings, all of different sizes and heights, blend as one.A visitor will walk from room to room and experience a sequence of baths, panoramic saunas, chill and relax areas. From the interior, the frame the constructed landscape and give access to outdoor terraces and pools. From thereon paths continue over the hills and through the

valleys connecting different spaces.The persons, who walk here, will see a combination of water, vegetation and archi-tecture, which gratifies the human desire for a world that is visible and tangible. Ar-chitecture constructs a landscape, and a landscape is inhabited. Interior and exterior, landscape and architecture are one.

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23VegetationPatrick Blanc who designs his Living Walls all over the world explains: “Do plants really need soil? No, … Earth is no more than a tool. Just water containing minerals and nu-trients, along with common daylight and car-bon dioxide are necessary for plants to make photosynthesis possible. ”Blanc has proven his expertise on many loca-tions including museums around the world. From the perspective of nature it is possible for plants to grow on a surface where there is no soil. As long as there’s no shortage of water.“Floating Gardens / Spa Wellness Amster-dam’ has been developed for the lake near the city where plenty of fresh water is avail-able. A similar island has never been devel-oped anywhere else. A floating sustainable biotope, using recycled materials with a veg-etation coating that from its pores literally breaths oxygen and wellness is unique for our planet.SustainabilityThe composite GreenRexwall TM was devel-oped anywhere else. A floating sustainable

biotope, using recycled materials with a veg-etation coating that from its pores literally breaths oxygen and wellness is unique for our planet.The composite GreenRexwall TM was devel-oped in collaboration with the German con-structor Aquahouse GmbH and is that strong and constructive that building cement, steel

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and constructive that building cement, steel or bricks are no longer needed. The ultimate isolates, is constructive, and light – not important – it is particularly buoyant. Not just the recycling of polystyrene is environmentally friendly Floating Gardens, the vegetation on the walls and roof, CO2 is converted to oxygen, and particulate mat-ter demolished.The vegetation is a breeding ground for birds,

butterflies and insects but most will feel at home. The innovative technical

installations provide big energy savings. The surrounding water acts as a heat ex-

changer, like a refrigerator works conversely. It can serve as heat – and cooling source and is

up 70% more efficient than conventional energy systems.

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sound bits

Federico Churba is a designer in Argentina whose philoso-

phy is first and foremost to look at the world and learn

from it. He tries to be open to discovering materials and

their properties; he questions processes; he recommends

getting physically involved and experimenting. Churba

says, “To inhabit a space is to do more than occupy it ... It

is to look, explore and inhabit.” Not long ago, we took a

look at Churba’s Pluvial tables and Hanoi lamp.

How did the Pluvial Tables get their name?

Most of the pieces are based on those trips, synthesized

and transformed. Pluvial Tables’ origin came from the va-

riety of uses given to concrete water tubes in many districts

without sewers, large volumes shaped as funnels, placed

upside down, as a pot, as a bin, as a table structure,

in groups, alone...The dynamic of inner and outer,

concave and convex result in a series of tables that

can be inverted or combined to create different

situations.

There seems to be an Asian flavour to the

Once series of lamps... Would you say that

this is so? What are some of the Argentine

influences in your work?

Working with references is something I usually do,

to explore the world and learn from it. Travels revi-

talize me and foreign countries are a huge source of in-

spiration. I have always been attracted by Asian culture,

their elegant simplicity, and their aesthetic appeal.

2 Questions for Federico Churba

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design for a

living world

By choosing sustainable materials, designers contribute to the advancement of a global conservation ethic that can fos-ter consumer awareness. “ “

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living world by Ethan Hawke

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31Ten designers including Ted Muehling,

Yves Béhar Stephen Burks and Maya Lin have created ob-jects for Design for a Living World, an exhibition of products

using sustainable materials from around the world that opened at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York

this week.The designers were commissioned by The Nature Conservancy to “tell a unique story about the life-cycle of materials and

the power of conservation and design”. This spring, The Nature Conservancy and the Smith-

sonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will present “Design for a Living World,” a traveling

exhibition featuring objects created by leading designers and made from sustainable, natural materials. The exhi-

bition will premiere at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum on

M a y 1 4

and continue through Jan. 4, 2010.The Nature Conservancy collaborated with prominent designers from the worlds of fashion, industrial and furniture design, and each designer focused on a natural material from a specific place where the Conservancy works. The locations ranged from iconic American landscapes, such as the sweeping grasslands of Idaho, to such exotic places as the southwest coast of Australia and the forests of China’s Yunnan Province. The designs explore the transformation of organic items—wood, plants, wool—into beautiful and useful objects. By choosing sustainable materials that support, rather than deplete, endangered

places, designers can help reshape our materials economy and advance a global conservation ethic. Through this process, the exhibition reveals fascinating stories about regeneration, natural

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places and the human connection to the Earth’s lands and wa-ters.

The exhibition features designs by Yves Béhar, Stephen Burks, Hella Jongerius, Maya Lin, Christien Meinderts-ma, Isaac Mizrahi, Ted Muehling, Paulina Reyes and Ezri Tarazi. Béhar worked with a women’s choco-late cooperative in Costa Rica to develop packag-ing for the raw cocoa they use to make a traditional hot drink and a grating tool that evokes the sensual

nature of chocolate, delivering an intense experience through taste, form and narrative.

Burks traveled to Australia’s Gondwana Link to design the “Totem”—a tool made from reclaimed native jamwood

that the local Noongar people can use to make and package a line of organic herb- and sandalwood-based cosmetics that they are developing for export.Dutch designer Jongerius traveled to the Yucatan Peninsula to observe traditional chicle latex harvesting and explore the possibilities of chicle beyond its use in chewing gum production, resulting in more than 20 embellished vessels and plates.Using wood harvested from a Forest Stewardship Council-certified Nature Conservancy property in Maine, Lin crafted a striking piece of furniture that highlights the beauty of an individual tree.Meindertsma used wool sourced from a sustainable sheep ranch in Idaho to create a large-scale knit rug—a “flock” of smaller compo-nents, each one made from 3.5 pounds of wool, the yield of a single sheep.

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Famed fashion designer Mizrahi turned Alaskan salmon skin—typically a waste product of the salmon industry—into a dress that references the scales of the fish from which it was made.Acclaimed jewelry designer Muehling transformed Micronesian vegetable ivory and ocean-harvested black and keishi pearls into a series of bracelets, necklaces and other items, spotlighting the beauty of these natural materials.Reyes, for Kate Spade new york, traveled to Bolivia’s forests to work with local craftspeople to design a series of handbags made of sustainable wood, cotton and jipijapa, a fiber made of palm leaves.Industrial designer Tarazi designed a series of adjustable compo-nents that connect to mature bamboo stalks from China’s Yunnan Province, creating a domestic forest that supports a range of living arrangements.“Our goal with the exhibition is to connect audiences to the natu-ral world by exploring the story of place through innovative de-sign,” said Mark Tercek, president and chief executive of The Na-ture Conservancy. “‘Design for a Living World’ challenges us to think about the products we use—where they come from, how they are made and what the impacts are on our planet and on local com-munities.”“‘Design for a Living World’ offers a captivating look into the life cycle of materials and the power of conservation and design,” said

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Paul Warwick Thompson, director of Cooper-Hewitt. “Cooper-Hewitt is delighted to partner with The Nature Conservancy in raising awareness about material conservation and sustainable de-sign solutions.”“This exhibition opens an important conversation between conser-vationists and designers about the potential and legacy of natural materials,” said Abbott Miller, co-curator of the exhibition. “By choosing sustainable materials, designers contribute to the ad-vancement of a global conservation ethic that can foster consumer awareness.”“Design for a Living World” is co-curated by Miller and Ellen Lupton. Miller, a partner in the New York office of Pentagram, is recognized for his innovative installations for the National Build-ing Museum, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Freud Museum in Vienna, Austria and the permanent exhibitions at the Harley-Davidson Museum. Lupton is curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt and is the author of many books on design.The exhibition and book will also feature specially commissioned photographs from award-winning photojournalist Ami Vitale, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek and National Geographic. The structures used to display the exhibition will include Forest Stewardship Council-certified plywood from community forests in Bolivia.


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Resurgence

FYI - The Reflected Gaze - Self Portraiture Today

Into the Pixel 2010

Tim Burton at MoMA

May 2010 at ArtHaus Gallery in San Francisco, CA runs through May 2010

May 2010 at Hotel des Arts in San Francisco, CAApril 2010 at Torrance Art in Seattle, WA

happeningsevents worth notice

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chuladesign

In observance of 80 years of design, Philips brought together about 250 designers to look at global issues. “

“by Philips Design

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Chulha allows people to cook in the traditional way but re-moves reduces the amount of fuel required and the risk of injury or death caused by smoke inhalation.The stove won the Home category of the biannual awards, which promote design that improves people’s lives and which has a prize of €100,000 per category.Intent: limit the dangerous health conditions caused by tradi-tions of indoor cooking in many rural areas of the developing world. The Chulha is a stove designed to limit the dangerous health conditions caused by traditions of indoor cooking in many rural areas of the developing world.The stove is being made available by Philips Design to the uni-verse of social entrepreneurs so that they can, free of charge, produce the stove, themselves, and generate local business while helping counter what the World Health Organization estimates is some 1.6 million deaths per year from conditions prompted by the toxic fumes of indoor cooking with “bio-mass” fuels (wood, dung, peat, etc.).The Chulha creates a safer environment for indoor cooking in several ways.• It traps smoke and heat inside a locally cast housing in such a way as to heat two pot-holes with a high rate of efficiency

to require less fuel;• It then directs the smoke through a chimney chamber that in-

cludes a stack of slotted clay tablets – they capture particulates as the smoke moves through, cleaning the exhaust before it ever leaves

the assembly; and• The Chulha’s chimney then includes an indoor access for cleaning, elim-

Chulha, a cooking stove intended for use in the developing world by Philips Design, is among the winners of the Index Awards 2009, which were announced in Copenhagen last night.

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inating the need seen in previous devices for a family member, usually the mother, to climb on the roof and attempt cleaning. This has been blamed for many accidents, along with the tox-icity of the smoke.Notably, Philips has gone to great lengths – and three itera-tions of the Chulha design – to make it something that seems familiar and attractive to users in the field. Conscious that tradition is the basis for much of the issue the Chulha addresses, Philips’ designers have concentrated much sensitivity on generating a readily acceptable response to the problem.“It all started back in 2005,” says designer Unmesh Kulkarni of the Philips Design Team based in Pune, India. “In observance of 80 years of design, Philips brought together about 250 designers to look at global issues. Our CEO, Stefano Marzano, wanted to look at our ability to think about solving social problems.”INDEX:Award recipient Stefano Marzano, CEO and Chief Creative Director at Philips Design in Eind-hoven, the Netherlands, says, “The target users of the Chulha are all the families in rural environments. The focus for the creation of the Chulha was India, however there are similarities in many countries in Africa, Latin America and other regions, as well as in India.”“The fact that this product can be manufactured by even the end-user creates the opportunity in any location,” Marzano says, “to actually start the production of the product.”WHO estimates that 25 percent of indoor air-pollution deaths are in India, and that 800,000 infants die of related conditions worldwide, annually.

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around the world

Keith Johnson’s passion for art, antiques and travel emerged in

childhood as he accompanied his father, an art dealer, on ex-

cursions through Europe. His current role as Anthro-

pologie’s antiques buyer is driven by Johnson’s early

experiences and boundless curiosity. He spends

most of the year abroad in search of decora-

tive antiques to be sold in Anthropologie stores

and serve as inspiration for in-house design, as

well as gifted artisans to create original works.

Johnson’s relationship with Anthropologie

began in 1994 when his partner Glen Senk,

now CEO of parent company Urban Outfit-

ters Inc., became president. Senk asked John-

son to find antiques for the women’s lifestyle re-

tailer’s first store. As Anthropologie grew so did

Johnson’s responsibilities. He now acquires antiques

for 115 Anthropologie stores and curates the art gal-

lery in Anthropologie’s Rockefeller Center location.

Keith Johnson is the Buyer-at large for Anthropologie

Jennifer Griner2010

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